Community Highlights: Meet Vincent Lin of Valiant Pictures

Today we’d like to introduce you to Vincent Lin.

Hi Vincent, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always liked to daydream. I’ve always liked to watch movies and get lost in another world or in another life. Get lost in a good story. And I’ve always wanted to share that experience with others. This translated to falling in love with cinema, writing, and photography. I had a film camera in high school and back in the day, you had to go get the film rolls developed and wait a few days before you even can see what pictures you took. (To see if they even turned out) So not only were you conservative with the amount of photos you took, but they were usually thoughtful and taken with intention. I’d collect these photos (which I accumulated hundreds of) and organized them in a way that I could share. Which I didn’t even realize at the time was the start of me discovering visual storytelling. Creating emotion and story though pictures.

I went to film school and maybe I was too naive, but I just thought you go to film school and when you graduate, you get to direct a movie. Right? Wrong. It was a humbling experience being neck deep in student debt and having to start at the very bottom in the film world. I worked in production and slowly moved up the ladder and eventually found myself in advertising, a world I knew very little about. I crossed over to the dark side. There I began working on big brand campaigns and getting paid embarrassingly well. I learned a lot and I learned a lot very quickly. But I always kept directing and writing my own projects. Eventually I got lucky and some of them got noticed. In 2015, with producer extraordinaire Matthew D’Amato, co-founded Valiant Pictures. As a MBE certified production company, we’ve since expanded operations to various cities, we’ve had the honor of repping some amazing directors, and have produced dozens of award winning commercials. We’ve been recognized by Inc. Magazine and Forbes as a top growing independent production company, and in recent years have branched to feature film development and production with feature films we’ve produced screening at SXSW, Tribeca, and TIFF. I’ve had the privilege of directing my first feature titled, “Chopin” as well, which will make its debut this year. And most recently, I’ve expanded to take on the role of Creative Innovation Lead at Valiant to explore and develop AI and AI Hybrid production.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Yup, everything was extremely easy. No. Actually it hasn’t been easy at all, but also not in the way I expected. Truth be told, I’ve been very lucky and I think that comes down to genuinely caring about what you do and who you do it with. I surround myself with people much smarter and more skilled than me all the time (which isn’t very difficult), but I also make it a point to work with people who are good people. Kind, polite, not ego driven, open to collaboration, and always looking to grow. These qualities help build a community of co-workers and friends who continue to get better at what they do. I know it sounds like common sense, but common sense is not as common as one might think. And there’s quite a bit of people who aren’t pleasant in this world unfortunately.

One of the earlier struggles we had at Valiant was simply generating revenue. As a brand new production company without a strong reputation, portfolio, and stable clients, we didn’t have good cashflow. And any job is very enticing and you want to bend over backwards to take any job that gets thrown your way when you don’t have cashflow. It was a struggle, but from early on, Matt and I decided to not sacrifice quality, to not take jobs just to take jobs, to say no when we didn’t believe the budget or creative was good enough. We decided we don’t want to be that desperate production house who will do anything (even though we were desperate, we couldn’t let anyone know). And while I don’t fault any production company or anyone for taking work because you have to put food on the table, I didn’t want us to fall in that trap. I wanted to maintain a level of production quality and to maintain our brand integrity. So those early jobs we turned down were extremely difficult and we definitely struggled to do so, but I think the gamble paid off.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Valiant Pictures is a bi-coastal, minority owned, independent production company. When we started, we specialized in commercials and branded content. As the company grew, we added capabilities that span from creative campaign development all the way through post-production. While we still work heavily with top agencies and brands, we are resourceful and have established strong connections that allow us to be nimble and competitive now with in house support to offer clients a variety of options in their production approach. We’ve shot around the world. We’ve done short form, social, music videos, web series, TV, and our work speaks for itself. In recent years, we have expanded to feature film development and production and continue to explore ways to tell meaningful and engaging stories. We’ve accumulated quite a few awards as well, but that’s just dumb vanity stuff albeit the validation does help our low self-esteem.

I am currently Executive Producer, Partner, Director, and Creative Innovation Lead at Valiant. It’s a lot of titles, but ultimately I just like to create things. I like to turn good ideas into great ideas and then turn that into something tangible and memorable.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
I was that kid who always had a camera on them and recorded everything. Because I moved around a lot, I always felt like an outsider, but also because I was an outsider, I was never put into a box. In a way, that’s what has always inspired me to tell stories because no matter where you are from, what your background is, or even what language you speak, we all can relate and bond over stories.

Also, I once planted a Pokémon card to see if it would grow a Pokémon.

It did not.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.valiantpictures.com/
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/valiantpictures
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valiantpictures
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/valiantpictures
• Other: http://www.vinlin.com

Image Credits
Fern Marie, Steve Squall, Mark Ryann